Study Tools

Johnny Tremain

Esther Forbes

Chapters VIII–IX

Chapters XI–XII

Summary

In April, the Whigs sense that the British are planning
to take some military action. Paul Revere and Doctor Warren arrange
to warn the outlying Massachusetts towns of the British troops’
movements by using lantern signals from the spire of Christ’s Church.
While Johnny listens to Revere and Warren hash out their plan, he
drifts off to sleep and has a frightening dream. In his dream he
sees himself boiling lobsters with human eyes and beside him are
John Hancock and Samuel Adams. Hancock looks away, pitying the pleading
lobster eyes, but Adams relishes every moment. That evening Revere leaves
by horse to spread the warning throughout the countryside that the
British troops might advance.

Rab is convinced that fighting will break
out before the week is over, so he also leaves Boston to report
for duty in Lexington. He explains to Johnny that once fighting
begins, the British will not allow any man to leave the city of
Boston for fear that he will join the rebel forces. Rab seems to
feel no grief and only excitement about leaving, but Johnny is devastated
by his friend’s departure. Johnny offers to accompany Rab to Lexington,
but Rab gently reminds him that he is more useful as a spy in Boston than
as a soldier who cannot shoot a gun.

Johnny takes his job as a spy seriously, and he spends
all day hanging around the Afric Queen, the inn where Colonel Smith sleeps.
On April 18, two days after Rab leaves Boston,
Dove lets slip that Colonel Smith asked him to polish his campaign
saddle rather than his usual saddle. By subtly prodding Dove, Johnny
pieces together enough information to surmise that the British are
planning an expedition to Lexington and Concord. He runs to give
this news to Doctor Warren. Doctor Warren sends Johnny out into
the soldier-filled streets to repeat this message to the various
players in the elaborate relay system. First Johnny alerts Billy
Dawes, who will ride across land to warn the rebels in Lexington
and Concord. Next, he alerts Paul Revere who will travel to the
same towns by way of the Charles River. Finally, he summons the
parson and instructs him to hang two lanterns in the spire of Christ
Church.

When Johnny returns to Warren’s place, Revere and Dawes
are in the doorway. Revere is urging Warren to accompany him across
the Charles River. Once the fighting begins, they assume that the English
soldiers will round up colonists suspected of treason and hang them.
Warren, however, wants to stay in Boston and keep watch on the British
movement until the last possible minute. At dawn on April 19,
while Johnny sleeps in Doctor Warren’s place, the first shots of
war are fired on Lexington Green.

Analysis

Rab’s departure is cataclysmic for Johnny because it forces
him to reevaluate his own identity and his relationship with Rab.
Until now, he has not been forced to think for himself and instead
has depended on Rab for guidance and support. Without Rab, Johnny must
become his own man: instead of modeling his behavior after Rab’s,
he must use his own thoughts and ideas. Rab’s casual attitude as
they part ways hurts Johnny by reminding him how unequal the relationship
has been all along: Johnny has always needed Rab, but Rab has never
needed Johnny. Rab, as Johnny noted soon after they first became
friends, is self-contained—he knows who he is and how he wants to
behave. However, Rab’s self-containment reminds Johnny of his own
lack of a strong identity, and also reminds him that he will never
be as important to Rab as Rab is to him.

Johnny’s dream about boiling lobsters with human eyes
highlights his personal feelings about the conflict between the
British and the colonists. He feels pity for the British soldiers,
known as “lobsterbacks” because of their red uniforms, and is unable
to think of them as merely enemy targets. However, because his best
friend is in a precarious position as a Minute Man in Lexington,
it seems strange that Johnny is dreaming of dying British soldiers
instead of dying colonists. Perhaps the idea of Rab’s death is too
frightening for Johnny to think about directly, so instead he contemplates
the deaths of Rab’s battlefield enemies.

Johnny’s dream also draws attention to the different
attitudes toward and motivations for war among the major Whig players. While
Hancock seems to view war as a necessary evil on the path to independence,
Johnny suspects that Adams wants war for the sake of war. Hancock,
like Otis in his rousing speech, has lofty ideals at the heart of
his rebelliousness. Adams, the dream suggests, might simply have
revenge in mind when planning the war. In fact, Adams did have very
personal reasons for disliking the British. His father had been
a principal stockholder of the Land Bank organized in Massachusetts
in 1740, and when the British Parliament
destroyed the bank, his father was financially ruined. In addition,
Adams’s personal history suggests that he was a born agitator, always
eager for controversy and conflict. Adams’s rebelliousness might
derive from the sort of petty pride and quick temper that once motivated Johnny
to swear revenge on Dove. Supporting this suggestion are Otis’s
parting words to Adams at the last meeting of the Boston Observers.
“You’ll play your part,” Otis tells Adams scornfully, “but what
it is really about . . . you’ll never know.” Otis clearly insinuates
that Adams is an integral part of the revolution, but does not really
know what the Americans are fighting for—namely, freedom, independence,
and choice.

Finally, Johnny’s dream explores the complex moral situation concerning
the sacrifice of lives for individual rights. The lobsters look
up with their pitiful eyes, wanting their lives to be spared. The lobsters
have done nothing wrong, but are being sacrificed to satisfy the
hunger of Adams and Hancock. Similarly, the British soldiers have
caused no offense to the colonists, but they will be killed because
of a war started by the rebel leaders. Hancock may have loftier
reasons for starting a war, but it is debatable whether his motives
justify the loss of thousands of British and colonial lives. It seems
almost hypocritical to sacrifice so many individual lives to achieve
individual rights for all.